Just Fine with Caroline

by Annie England Noblin

  As for the O’Conners, they could trace their lineage to no one, although Caroline’s father grew up in Cold River. His great-grandparents emigrated from Ireland, and they owned and operated a shoe repair store in the middle of town—not far from the Jacob Powell statue. Her father was the first person in his family to go to college, which is where he’d met Maureen—a nice, Irish Catholic girl from New York.

  “I thought your father had taken me to the ends of the earth,” Caroline’s mother would say. The story of her first few years in Cold River had always been one of her favorites to tell. “Imagine me, a girl from Syracuse, here!”

  “She sure did stand out,” her father would chuckle. “With her bangle bracelets and wild, curly hair.”

  The only thing her mother couldn’t learn to love, the only thing she couldn’t understand, was how even after decades in Cold River, people still considered her an outsider. The townsfolk often referred to her, even after she was well into her forties, as “that girl from New York.” It wasn’t, Caroline learned, that the people in Cold River didn’t like her mother. In fact, most people adored her. It was simply that they didn’t trust outsiders, and she was an outsider. Caroline assumed her mother opened the Wormhole in an attempt to win over the townspeople, and in some ways it worked. They still thought of her as an outsider—that was never going to change. But they didn’t talk about it nearly as much.

  If Maureen was an outsider, Caroline’s father was the opposite. He returned to Cold River the golden boy—the town’s very own doctor, one of the only doctors in the county when he first began. There was a small hospital in town, but the doctors there were mostly volunteers from neighboring counties. As the years passed, more doctors filtered in, and Max O’Conner opened a family practice.

  After medicine and his family, Max O’Conner’s love was the river. It was his escape, their escape—the one place where Maureen could hide from the watchful eyes of the town, where Max could fish, and where their children could swim. They’d paid practically nothing for a small parcel of land back in the ’70s. It was one of the only pieces of land that far down that wasn’t owned by a member of the Cranwell family.

  It was the O’Conners’ campsite until Maureen opened the bait shop when Caroline’s brother, Jeremy, started school. The shop was successful for the most part, and even during the years when it wasn’t successful, Maureen was still there, every day in the summertime, until she could no longer drive herself. For a while after she moved home, Caroline drove her mother back and forth, staying with her for a few hours at a time. Last year, she’d begun staying with her mother full-time, and it wasn’t long before her mother could no longer make the trip at all. They had a nurse who came every single day, even when the shop was closed and even when her father was there on his days off. There were two nurses, rotating days, Monday through Sunday, and sometimes Caroline felt like a visitor in her own home, always tiptoeing around so as not to disturb the nurses. She wondered if maybe that was why she was so insistent upon keeping the shop open because selfishly, the shop was hers, really the only place where she could be herself.

  Max O’Conner suggested more than once that they close down the shop, maybe even sell it, but Caroline couldn’t bear to see the shop closed, or worse, owned by someone else. The thought made her sick to her stomach. No, Caroline had to keep the store open, at least while her mother was still alive. Even if she was partially motivated by selfish reasons, it would be one thing she could do for her, the only thing, really, and so she drove there every day from April to September. She kept the lights on and bait in the coolers. She smiled at customers most of the time, and she tried to remember that when the doors were open, she represented Maureen O’Conner.

  This day, however, the bait shop was closed because she and her father were sitting in a pew at the Second Coming Baptist Church. Just a stone’s throw from the Dairy Queen, the church had once been a bar called The Barn and so the building was subsequently built to resemble a big, red barn. When the owner had a religious epiphany while in county lockup for methamphetamine possession, The Barn was donated to Second Coming and quickly became one of the fastest-growing churches in all of Cold River. That’s when Haiden Crow moved to town. He, his wife, and three children were outsiders, but just from the neighboring county, so they weren’t considered outsiders in the same way that Caroline’s mother was. They were still from the Ozarks, and that’s what counted. Pam Brannan had been one of the first to begin attending Second Coming, and it didn’t take long before most of the town counted Haiden Crow as one of the best Southern Baptist preachers in the state.

  Brother Crow, as he liked to call himself, was outside welcoming guests when Caroline and her father arrived for Pam’s funeral. “Thank you for coming, Dr. O’Conner.” Haiden Crow reached out and shook Max O’Conner’s hand.

  “Thank you for having the service here, Father Crow,” Max O’Conner replied.

  “It was the least we could do. She was a member of our church family,” Haiden said. “And please, call me Brother Crow. I tell you that every time we meet. We’re Baptists, not Catholics.”

  “Alright then, Brother Crow.”

  “How is Mrs. O’Conner getting along?”

  Caroline’s father stiffened. He didn’t like to talk about his wife, especially not out in public. She’d been the one to attend services with Max. Now the job had fallen to Caroline while her mother stayed home with the nurse. “She’s well.”

  Ava Dawn shoved herself in between Caroline and Max. “Brother Crow!”

  “Sister Bean,” Haiden Crow greeted her. “I didn’t see you at Bible study last week.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Too busy for Bible study?”

  Ava Dawn leaned in to Haiden until she was so close to him that their hair was touching. “I left Roy,” she half yelled and half whispered. “I left him, just like you told me to!”

  Haiden Crow’s pale complexion reddened. “Ava Dawn, I didn’t tell you to— Well, that’s not what I meant.” His eyes scanned the crowd of interested funeral-goers. “We’ll talk about this at a more appropriate time.”

  “We better take our seats now,” Max O’Conner said, saving Brother Crow from the clutches of Ava Dawn. “We’re holding up the crowd.”

  “I figured he’d be happier,” Ava Dawn said as they walked away.

  “I don’t think Baptist ministers are supposed to be happy about divorce,” Caroline whispered.

  “You’re probably right,” Ava Dawn replied. “He didn’t exactly tell me to leave Roy.”

  “What did he say, then?”

  “He told me I deserve to be happy. That God wants me to be happy.”

  Caroline shrugged. “I reckon he does.”

  The whole town packed into the pews like sardines. Despite the uncomfortable hotness of the crowd, Caroline was glad that so many people turned out to tell Pam goodbye. She and her father situated themselves in a back pew, just as Haiden Crow took his place at the pulpit. “Thank you brothers and sisters, servants of the Lord.” A hush fell over the crowd, and Caroline snapped her attention to the front of the sanctuary. “Thank you for coming today to celebrate the life of Sister Pamela Brannan.” He paused for a moment to rake his hand down the length of his long, black beard. “Sister Brannan was a faithful soldier in the War for Christ, and today she has gone home. Her fight on this broken earth is over.”

  Caroline’s legs were sticking to the cracked vinyl padding on the pews. Every time she moved, her sweaty legs made noise.

  “Sit still,” her father scolded.

  “Pam’s life will not be forgotten,” Haiden continued. “Let her life, her good, long life, be a lesson to us all.”

  “A lesson?” Caroline whispered.

  “Shhhh.”

  “Let us remember that we must put the Lord first always. That we must devote our lives to Him and not to the earthly pleasures that we so oft dive into. Sister Brannan came to me several months ago deeply troubled. She was m
entoring a woman who was living a lifestyle that commonly leads the young women of our society to struggle. Let us not forget 1 Corinthians, Chapter 6: ‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God.’”

  Caroline shifted.

  “Shhhh!”

  “I spent many weeks counseling this woman, whose name I shall not speak. We discussed her ultimate goals as a Christian woman. She wanted to be a wife and mother. She wanted to live for the Lord. Proverbs 31:30–31: ‘Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.’” Haiden drew a breath. “Sister Brannan lived her life as an example for this woman and many others. She was a mother to Court and husband to Tom. That is what makes us here in this room feel her loss so deeply. It is what makes her death so sorrowful to those of us here on earth. But I beg of you not to mourn the loss of this righteous woman.”

  Caroline hoped he was about done.

  “Remember instead Revelation 12:13,” Haiden continued. “‘And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on . . . that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!’ ”

  A chorus of “Amen!” followed. The congregation leaned forward farther with every word Haiden Crow spoke. It didn’t seem to matter if he was telling the truth or not. Nobody in that room took a breath without Haiden Crow taking one first. It was easy to see how his church had grown to be one of the largest in the town. Even her father was wrapped up in Brother Crow’s delivery.

  Caroline stood with everyone else after the service to hug and cry with the family. Her heart ached for Court and his father, and her despair deepened when she saw them standing at the front of the church, Court dressed in the same suit he’d worn when he took her to prom seven years earlier. It had been a last-minute decision, something nice he’d done for her when she’d been stood up by her date, and she smiled at the memory.

  “Mr. O’Conner.” Court reached out to embrace Caroline’s father. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  “Pam was a lovely woman,” Max replied. “We’ll all miss her.”

  “Thank you,” Court’s father said, shaking Max’s hand. “I know you took care of her like she was your own until you couldn’t no more. I won’t be forgettin’ that.”

  “I’m so sorry” was all Caroline managed to get out before Court embraced her, and she felt his tears dripping down onto her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

  Court didn’t say anything. He released her only when his father put his hand on his back, quietly reminding him that there were other people waiting to see them. Caroline gave him one last squeeze before hurrying out of the sanctuary and into the bathroom. She leaned against the door and tried to collect herself. She could feel tears pricking at the edges of her eyes.

  Wandering farther into the bathroom, Caroline noticed there were no mirrors. Caroline wondered if maybe it was because they didn’t want women staring at themselves for too long. After all, it might prompt them to start thinking independently. She felt a pang of guilt for thinking that. Maybe she didn’t like Haiden Crow much, and maybe she wasn’t a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist, but she did have to thank him for saying whatever it was he said to get Ava Dawn away from Roy—this time, she hoped, for good. Besides, it wasn’t like she wanted to look at herself, anyway. Caroline looked down at her black dress. It was her mother’s, and it hung on her like a tent. She looked like she was dressed to, well, attend a funeral. Despite the heat, she was wearing a cardigan, because it didn’t matter how much time Caroline spent at the river or being outside in general, the only thing the sun ever gave her was freckles—lots of them. Her freckles, she knew, were just about the only things she’d gotten from her mother. Well, them and her mop of unruly red hair. The rest of it, her height (too short), her eyes (too wide), and the gap between her teeth, were all genetic gifts from her father. She took a moment to tighten her ponytail, which sat more like a nest of curly red snakes on her head than anything else. She was not suited for anything other than cutoff jean shorts and a tank top, and she was just sure everyone else knew it, too.

  “Caroline? Are you in there?” Max O’Conner’s voice wafted in through the hallway. “Come on, we’re going to be late for the graveside.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Let’s head out,” her father said when he saw Caroline emerge from the bathroom. “What do you think about going to the graveside? Do you want to go?”

  “It’s up to you.” Caroline really, really didn’t want to go, and she knew gravesides were especially hard on her father, even though her brother had been dead longer than she’d been alive. His grave was in an older plot, originally purchased for Caroline’s grandmother. Her father, when he would talk about it, said that it wasn’t fair for parents to bury their children. It should be the other way around. It was the only time she’d ever heard her father say that anything wasn’t fair. His favorite saying to her as a child had been, “Life’s not fair, Caroline,” but it wasn’t life that got her brother buried in her grandmother’s plot at the cemetery—it was death.

  “I’m okay to go,” her father said, at last. Max O’Conner opened the passenger’s-side door to his truck for Caroline. He didn’t say anything, but Caroline could tell by the way that his brow was furrowed that he was thinking. It wasn’t until they were both in the car and turning onto the highway that he spoke. “I know it’s not easy talking to me about these things,” he began. “I know your mother was better at this.”

  Caroline reached out and touched her father’s shoulder, momentarily forgetting about Court. “You do just fine, Dad.”

  Max O’Conner mustered a smile for his daughter.

  “I miss Mom.”

  “I miss her, too,” he whispered. Instead of following the other cars in the funeral processional and driving straight on towards the cemetery, Caroline’s father took a sharp left into the Dairy Queen parking lot. “I think Pam Brannan would understand our need for ice cream at a time like this,” he said. “The graveyard will be there tomorrow. We can pay our respects another day.”

  CHAPTER 6

  A WEEK LATER, AND THE FISH STILL WEREN’T biting.

  Caroline reeled in her line slowly and prepared to cast it out again. She didn’t know why it mattered to her if she caught anything—she almost always threw the fish back. She’d been in junior high the last time she took anything home to eat. Nobody had time to clean the fish and fry them anymore, but she continued to go fishing a few times a week, just to relieve stress. Yara was a poor guard dog, but she’d scare off anybody who didn’t know her and thought they might be able to take their fill from the shop. Most everybody else knew if they couldn’t find Caroline at the shop they could walk a few hundred feet down to the water’s edge and find her there, lolling her line in and out of the Cold River.

  She knew it wasn’t the dream of most women her age to run a bait shop for their family and spend their time fishing and caring for their ailing mother. Truthfully, it hadn’t been Caroline’s dream, either. She’d wanted to become a teacher, a history teacher, and that’s what she’d gone to college for. Her dreams included coming back to Cold River, but in her mind she’d had her own house, her own job . . . her own life. She assumed her dreams were like those of the other girls she’d gone to high school with, although most of them got married right after graduation and had kids before they were even old enough to drink. Caroline, on the other hand, never really thought about marriage. She never really thought about children or what it might be like to raise her own family until she looked all around her and nearly everyone was coupled up. Her cousin Ava Dawn was one of the only women she knew who w
as married and didn’t have children.

  Childless women scared people.

  When Caroline first returned home from college, friends of her parents tried fixing her up with any man they deemed suitable. After a while, the “suitable” part became less of a necessity when Caroline remained single. Once folks around town realized that it might be a choice on her part to stay unmarried and childless, they became all at once fascinated and confused. What kind of a woman likes being alone?

  Once her mother’s condition became town gossip, Cold River’s inhabitants began to leave Caroline alone. She had responsibility now. She had a reason to continue living with her parents, and people began to feel sorry for her for a whole new reason.

  Caroline stared off into the water, watching it ripple and splash over the rocks on the bank. When she’d been a little girl, her father told her stories about the first people who lived on the river—the first people who made their homes in this part of the Ozarks. She supposed it was the reason she grew up fascinated with history—the reason she wanted to be a teacher. Her favorites to hear were the stories of Prohibition, and she would ask her father to tell them over and over again. Sometimes, her father would amuse her by taking her in a johnboat down the river, retracing the steps of rumrunners who’d used the river to transport alcohol between neighboring counties.

  “Of course,” her father would say, “it wasn’t rum in these hollers. It was moonshine.”

  The Cranwells were notorious in Cold River for producing generation after generation of moonshine bootleggers. The stills, townsfolk said, could still be found out in Cranwell Corner if you looked hard enough. She didn’t know if that was true—she’d never been close enough to Cranwell Corner to look, afraid she might run into the likes of Jep Cranwell. There was no telling what he might do if he found her sniffing around his property. Still, she couldn’t help but daydream when the fish weren’t biting.